| Feed Back  Editor's note: These letters were sent in response to the editorial by Roland Mangold in the Sept 2001 issue of EOM - it can be read on EOM's web site at: https://www.eomonline.com/Common/currentissues/Sept01/editorial.htm
Dear Mr. Mangold:
While I respect your right to editorialize on the benefits of the GeoData Alliance (GDA), as a state GIS coordinator, actually tasked with coordinating GIS instead of writing about it, I must respectfully but strongly disagree. Your recognition of the size of the geospatial community is correct, however your assessment that the state of affairs is fragmented and in disrepair couldn't be further from the truth. It is in GDA's best interest to perpetuate this myth since this group's only authority is derived from within GDA, through their own self-anointment and their exclusive mutual admiration. They have no real legitimacy such as the FGDC or state councils have. They perpetuate their illusion of legitimacy by intimidation of non-inclusion in "their version" of the movement. Additionally, it is precisely the size and diversity of the Geospatial community that makes it so absurd to think that a governing body as proposed by the GDA is representative enough to guide this movement.
Unfortunately, efforts promoting GDA may eventually harm legitimate existing efforts at sector-wide coordination. The combination of local coordination, sector based (FGDC, NSGIC, NACO, IGC, UCGIS, MAPPS etc.) activities, and forums held occasionally to bring these groups together, was progressing quite nicely. Apparently, the for-profit sector wasn't in enough control this way. Your statement "this industry needs to pull together to address the issues that fall across all sectors" pretty much sums GDA up - an industry attempt to regulate both itself and others for private and not public benefit. GDA, like a pesky mosquito, is sucking up precious funding and energy from existing, successful coordination efforts ($500,000 plus and still counting after three years of fluffy rhetoric and zero action).
Finally, I find GDA to be an insipid attempt to establish a pretentious organization of theorists on top (around, upside-down - it isn't clear) of the people who really do the work. Any organization that has as an agenda item "book signings by the famous authors among us" is not one that most state GIS coordinators want anything to do with. While the GDA mantra is "If not this, then what" my personal mantra is " If you got time for GDA then you got way too much time". My wish for those who attend the Geodata Forum in Denver is to have a warm, fuzzy, theoretical, chaordic time, and then disband the whole shebang and get back to the real GIS coordination efforts that can and will succeed. Sincerely,
Stewart Kirkpatrick
State GIS Coordinator
State of Montana Dear Roland:
Thank you for serving on the 2001 National GeoData Forum Steering Committee. In your September editorial: Forum for All Seasons and All Reasons-you predicted the Forum would be "a unique and auspicious opportunity for us all". How right you were! Praise for the 2001 National GeoData Forum has been rolling in since the end of the conference, Nov. 1-3 in Denver. In unsolicited emails, participants said they enjoyed the opportunity to discuss shared problems and to plot collaborative solutions. Others said the one-year-old GeoData Alliance has already proven itself a key asset to the GIS and geospatial data community.
The forum was convened with one central objective: to share success stories on collaborative efforts. Collaboration was the focus of two panel discussions, which were sandwiched between a range of speakers, workshops, an evening dance and hallway shop talk about new applications.
The Nov. 2 panel, "Stories from the Field: What does it take to create and sustain a successful collaboration?" was moderated by Jan Hauser of Sun Microsystems and featured John Moeller, David Schell, Victoria Reinhardt and James Duckens-all engaged in efforts to improve the use of GIS in the public and private sectors.
Saturday's panel, "Bridging the Public Private Divide in the Rocky Mountain West," was the forum's most raucous discussion. Moderated by Joan Fitzpatrick, deputy regional director of the USGS, panelists and audience members shared their frustrations, offered advice, promised to work together to overcome obstacles to public-private ventures and pledged to push standardization and interoperability.
Many agreed that a lack of public funding and reluctance on the part of the private sector to share proprietary data are major roadblocks. Others said that it is important for all members of the GIS community, whether public, private or nonprofit, to remember the tremendous societal and environmental improvements that geospatial data can reap if people collaborate. The keynote speakers urged the GIS community to use its skills for the common good, to bridge the divide between scientists and policymakers and to work diligently toward data standards. All the speakers agreed that spatial technology's potential to improve policymaking, the environment, and community planning has yet to be fully tapped.
Speaker Harlan Cleveland spoke of his days in the Kennedy administration and offered this advice: The development of public-interest goals is best entrusted to committed individuals "whose source of interest is not derived from their paycheck."
Mark Schaefer, CEO and president of NatureServe, addressed the ability of data to assist policymaking, from disaster preparation to environmental planning, urban growth and conservation priorities. There is tremendous interest in geospatial data, but much of it is "not readily understood or known about by policymakers."
Economist and author Hal Varian spoke of the historic tendency to over-invest in technological innovation and the ensuing strategies for survival in a poor economy. As the geospatial data community works toward standards, he said it is better to standardize one component at a time rather than all at once. Your thought-provoking editorial convinced many people to find out for themselves what the GeoData Alliance is all about. They discovered as you predicted that the "GDA is an open forum where all sectors can have a voice in this process". Again, thank you for your many contributions to the community. Warm regards,
Kathy L. Covert
2001 National GeoData Forum
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